Prometheus Wiki Guide

Questions and Answers

David was tasked by Peter Weyland to discover a way to prolong his creator's life. He asks Holloway: "What would you be willing to do to get the answers to your questions?" Holloway says, "Anything and everything." This enables David to move ahead and knowingly infect Holloway to help him find the answers to Peter's own quest of prolonging life.

The hologram that shows the Engineers' ship's destination clearly shows the planet Earth -- and the ship itself is loaded to the brim with the urns containing the black substance. The movie doesn't directly answer the question whether the Engineers are planning to destroy humankind or if they are planning on evolving it through the catalyst.

The exact workings of the substance is not explicitly explained in Prometheus (though it could be the subject of future films). The movie lets us hear one theory, uttered by Prometheus Captain Janek, who believes the alien ship's cargo of urns is a payload, a weapon built to destroy. David, the android, seeks to uncover its purpose by testing it on Holloway. Since the substance is shown to have both destructive and life-giving properties in the prologue of the movie (where the engineer sacrifices himself), and based on comments from Ridley Scott, the substance is believed to be a catalyst for evolution. When exposed to it, a living subject's DNA appears to rapidly change. In the case of the worms, they are transformed into snake-like creatures, the engineer who ingests it is deconstructed and his DNA in turn creates new life. In Holloway's case, we do not see the outcome as he is killed by Vickers. It is possible that he is "evolving" -- or that he is breaking down similar to the engineers.

It is not yet known if the difference in effects is based on metaphysical properties or whether the substance is ingested or merely touched, or if it's about the amount the subject is exposed to. What's for certain is that the substance reacts to living things -- David remains unaffected.

There is no clear answer to this question in the movie. Vickers is identified as Peter Weyland's daughter in the movie -- although it is not known if she really is his daughter (Weyland would've have to had been in his 60s when he fathered her). Vickers certainly acts emotionless for part of the movie, but also displays very selfish human traits, like the desire to succeed Weyland upon his death. When asked about whether her character is a robot, Theron muses whether perhaps part of Vickers' DNA is in David -- that Weyland created David in his daughter's image. "We did talk about that a lot, that it was nice to have something ambiguous about the origins of both of us, maybe, like why do we look so much alike," said Theron. "Why am I walking so much like him? Is it that I am an android or is it that I gave him human qualities, that I gave him my DNA?""

This has been a question that has had simple answers in the past "Alien" movies, since the Xenomorphs have always been the top-killers on each films (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien:Resurrection). However the top-killer in Prometheus is actually a human... sort of. The Geologist Fifeld is responsible for the death of a total of seven of the ship's crewmembers, as when mutated, he managed to murder three mercs (Vladimir, Taplow and Sheppard) and four mechanics (Wallace, Barnes, and two other crewmembers only known as Mechanics 3 and 4).

Runner-up mass-murderer is the Prometheus itself, which killed its captain (Janek), and crewmembers Chance (first assistant) and Ravel (second assistant) when crashing into the Engineer Spaceship.